Brothers Mike & Josh Greenfield, aka The Brothers Green, hit it big with their online YouTube show Midnight Munchies a few years ago. MTV contacted the guys about doing a show and the result is Brother’s Green EATS!, which premieres worldwide on MTV this week. The City Lane got the opportunity to chat with the brothers about the new show, which combines cooking, music, travel & celebrity guests. Mike and Josh also shared the recipe for one of their creations with us, a New York City Chinatown inspired Bao Bun Burger which you can find here.
How will Brothers Green EATS! differ from Midnight Munchies?
Josh – Midnight Munchies is part of the show but there are also a lot of different things, seeing us going out in Brooklyn NY and going around the world and trying different foods and then making our own fusion versions, cooking with musicians and funny surprise skits as well.
How important a role does Music play in the kitchen – do you ever match music to food?
Mike – We’ve always enjoyed playing music, it’s a natural collaboration, no specific music structure to the show – whenever we feel like playing music we’ll play a little tune, sometimes we’ll do a little skit and involve music or we’ll cook for artists and play them a song i.e we did a cover of Enrique’s song for him in Malta.
Josh – We’ll also match up artists songs and cover it turning it into a recipe eg. We took the Sam Smith song Stay With Me and taught people how to make hash browns using the tune of the song with different lyrics.
How important has your focus on accessible ingredients and kitchen utensils been to your success?
Josh – It’s big – for us we’ve been exposed to a lot of cooking shows that focused on nicer ingredients and materials – we were in colleague without much money in New York City – it was all about being resourceful, cooking with what you had, looking in the pantry and learning to cook with just one thing, i.e how to cook with scissors, or without a kitchen! So always trying to find new ways i.e. cooking in a hotel with a clothing iron – which we did with David Hasselhoff and Ed Sheeran which you’ll see in the show.
Mike you stated you found passion for cooking during a trip to Australia – tell us more.
Mike – when I was in Australia I took a break from schooling – studying architecture, there were a lot of fresh ingredients in Australia, I had time to explore and cook for my friends and when I came back I started cooking for my friends all the time – it was full on and I was focused on trying to become a better cook by watching food TV, exploring restaurants and going online and trying out new recipes, so it all started with a beach in Australia and experiencing freedom! I lived in the Gold Coast of Australia – beautiful place.
Brothers Green Eats sees you travel around the world, what’s the biggest different between doing a segment on the field compared to your Brooklyn kitchen?
Mike – You have to be a lot more resourceful, a lot of times we’re cooking outside or backstage, so we don’t have many utensils, maybe we have a clothing iron or a coffee pot.
Josh – It really comes down to exploring the culture, trying the local cuisine, and realising that a lot of the musicians we’re meeting don’t have time to go out and try it so we go out and bring them back a cool twisted version of local foods which inspires us to learn new things as well.
You guys are from Philadelphia originally how do you compare the vibe in areas like Northern Liberties and Fishtown to Williamsburg?
Josh – When you live in NY everyone compares things to NYC, and that’s what I hear a lot of about Fishtown, it’s like the equivalent to Williamsburg in Philadelphia. I played a lot of shows down there when I was in a band called Cannon Logic, it seems a little more spread out, Williamsburg is more contained, but there are a lot of cool things going on down there.
Catch Mike and Josh in their brand new show, Brothers Green EATS! premiering on Thursday, 30th April @ 9pm on MTV, Foxtel Channel 124.